Accidental Farmers

In 2014 we found ourselves living on a wind battered hilltop in rural central New York. The neighborhood was SPARSE, we had 110 acres which was a small farm compared to most of our neighbors. There was a sign at the end of the driveway, paint worn almost completely off, but we thought it said Rip Van Winkle Farm. It made sense to us because Washington Irving was known to draw inspiration from the land in this very county! Obviously the person who named this place was a literature buff, right?

We didn’t intend to farm when we moved there, but the love of good food instilled in me by my agriculture-minded grandfather made it almost an inevitability. We started small - a kitchen garden with some surplus for canning and freezing. Then just a few rabbits for meat… then a lot of rabbits for meat, then a layer flock and broiler chickens and eventually sheep.

The sheep have a much larger job than just as a high quality source of food. They are little wooly magicians, grazing low quality (in the case of the old farm) forage, depositing high quality fertilizer, and aerating soil with their tiny hooves. The transformation of the property was stunning!

Through it all, my city-raised husband and partner became a farmer of the highest order, a transformation that is even more impressive than that of the farm itself. In 2022 we decided that a new farm in the Mohawk Valley that would offer new challenges and opportunities was what we needed. The task of moving the farm was monumental. We named the new property Greenfields, but the farm operation will forever be Rip Van Winkle Farm. The name has endured despite the fact that it was never the name of the farm in the first place. 😉